Kathy Griffin, the lackluster and mediocre comedian, craving attention this past week, decided it would be a marvelous publicity stunt to have her photographed wielding a bloody beheaded replica of President Trump’s head.
This incident should have gone on unheard about, like the other ninety nine percent of Griffin’s life and career. Yet, the general public, including many on the political right, created such an uproar that she went on to publicly apologize and remove the picture from her own social media.
While this incident highlights the Trump derangement syndrome that has infected swarms of the left, that is not what makes it such a prime case study of political expression in today’s climate. Instead, it is the outrage from the right-wing over her action that sheds light on their hypocrisy. Since the rise of the “social justice warrior” on the left, the right-wing of America has attempted to brand itself the torchbearer of freedom of speech and expression. Yet now they are feigning the exact same outrage that the left has long done (and continues to do so) over figures of their end of the political spectrum.
While it is tempting to fire back at left-wing agitators as revenge for their absurd sensitivities and over-reactions to political expression and speech from the right, we must take the moral high ground and just ignore them. Of course, that is hard after all these years that they have constantly spouted off in rants, and branded political speech and expression from many on the right, including libertarians and classical liberals, as sexist, homophobic, or racist (terms now so overused their once poignant stings have been diluted away into irrelevance). Yet, ignoring them is exactly what we must do, because while public outrage is not the same as using government to suppress or censor speech, condoning public outrage for such purposes only leads us further in the direction of a society in which we find such action by the government a real possibility.
So, dear right-wing America, don’t be hypocrites. Instead, let us all please just ignore Kathy Griffin instead, it really shouldn’t be that hard.
Image: Tyler Shields TMZ
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